


Monday Evening

by rufeepeach



Series: Time Of Day [13]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Smut, Time of Day 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:55:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle is sick, so Gold comes to her aid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monday Evening

Gold swore that Belle had caught the cold on her own.

After all, he hadn’t gotten the least bit sick until after she had started sniffling. The cold that became a flu was most certainly not his fault. Even if the little knot of worry and guilt in the pit of his stomach begged to differ.

He managed to stop himself from rushing to her side for the eight hours he sat in his shop. She didn’t text, call, or in any other way communicate the whole time.

Finally, 5:30pm rolled around, and he closed up early.

Her father would be home, surely, but he could still call. Just to make sure that she was still breathing and willing to speak to him. Because the flu she caught might just have been partially the result of him insisting on kissing her in his living room, despite his oncoming sore throat and the fact that he knew better.

She shouldn’t, he reasoned, have come to him wearing the low-cut silver-grey and purple dress and made her lips so red.

But then, he was almost certain she could show up in a sludge-green oversized smock and Wellington boots, and he’d still want to kiss her breathless and take her against any available surface. So maybe this was more his fault than hers.

“Rum?” she answered on the third ring, as he walked aimlessly - headed to her house, his feet knew if his mind refused to acknowledge it - his cellphone pressed to his ear.

Her voice was low, tired, scratchy and rough. Sick.

His Belle was sick, and it was his fault, and the knot in his stomach tightened further. “You’re still alive then?” he tried to hide the desperate worry in his voice, and failed miserably.

He wasn’t supposed to care, after all. Even if not caring about Belle was like asking him not to have a heartbeat. She wasn’t supposed to know.

She gave a husky little chuckle, which ended in a cough, “Yeah, just about. You checking up on me?”

“You missed our meeting, dearie,” he reminded her, “Not like you.”

“I don’t want to give you this horrible bug,” she replied, “Plus I don’t think I can get out of bed right now.”

“Normally a very attractive prospect,” he smirked, and promised that one day she’d say that for an entirely different reason. In some new life, the next world, after the Cursebreak, when she could lie in bed of a morning and he could bring her her breakfast, and then distract her as she tried to eat. “But perhaps not right now?”

“Not unless you have a fetish for snotty tissues and sneezing.” She giggled, and she was still Belle, even sick and stuck in bed.

“You on your own, then?” He didn’t know why he asked, but he said it and waited for the answer with almost-baited breath.

“Yeah,” she sighed, softly, “Papa… doesn’t do well with illness. He’ll be out until it’s really late and he’s sure I’m asleep.”

In the old world, Sir Maurice had been one of the best fathers Gold had ever met. The only man who’d not only flatly chosen his child over his kingdom, but also then allowed her to do as she would, and be the hero. He wouldn’t have left her alone and sick.

But he was just Moe French, here, demoted from Lord to peasant florist, and it seemed his dedication to his child had become outweighed by cowardice.

Gold could relate. Even if he wanted to smack the man silly for leaving her alone when she was suffering.

“I’ll be over in a moment, then.” He said, softly, before he could stop himself. He hung up before she could protest.

He only stopped twice on his way to the French’s house: once at Granny’s for a take out portion of chicken soup, and once at the drug store for every kind of medicine, tissue, and chocolate bar they had. He had, of course, never treated a sick woman in this world before. He figured that the odd look from Sneezy the Dwarf was worth it, if one out of the twenty things in his basket made his Belle feel better.

No, not ‘his’ Belle; never ‘his’ Belle. Sooner or later he needed to get that through his head: in this world, whether he liked it or not, Belle could never be truly his.

But he could, at least, sit at her bedside and keep her company when she was sick.

He knocked on the door, and then remembered - stupidly - that Moe was out and Belle collapsed upstairs.

He walked around to the back of the house, seeing no alternative but to rouse her and have her let him inside. “Belle?” he called.

No response.

“BELLE?” louder, but any more noise and he’d arouse some suspicion. Still nothing.

He looked around, and before he could think at all about what he was doing, he had bent to pick up a pinecone from the lawn, and thrown it at Belle’s bedroom window.

A moment later, it was followed by another. And another.

“Belle!”

“What?” a dark head, red-nosed and annoyed, appeared through the open window. And then she smiled. “Rum? The fuck are you doing here?”

“You’re alone and sick, dearie,” he replied, “I came to help.” He raised his shopping bag of supplies, and couldn’t help the proud, almost puppyish, smile on his face. She snorted, and wiped at her nose with a tissue, laughing silently.

“I can see that. The door’s on the latch, come on up!” she said, and then her head disappeared and Gold was left to return to the front door, and push it open. He could, he supposed, have tried that earlier. But it had been rather fun to throw things to a lady’s window, and ask for permission.

Rumpelstiltskin had never had the chance to be a knight, and their courtship in the old world had been in the loosest sense of the word. Belle deserved a little bit of foolery, even if that was as far as he could go right now.

“Belle?” he called up the stairs, as he closed the door behind him and made his way up to the first floor apartment.

“In here!” came the reply, and he followed her voice into her bedroom.

He had never seen it so untidy, and it was rather adorable the picture she made. She was curled back under her duvet, red-nosed, her hair lying in straggled curls around her shoulders, tissues scattered like a bird’s nest all around her.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked, as he gingerly cleared a space for himself on the bedclothes and pressed a hand to her forehead. She was a normal temperature, thank goodness: on the mend.

“I can breathe today,” she offered him a smile, and her voice sounded more normal than it had on the phone, “You didn’t need to come play nursemaid. I might have… exaggerated a little before.”

“Oh?” he smirked, and she blushed, “In what way?”

“I’m sorry… you didn’t need to- I’ve got a cold.” He was unpacking the bag as she spoke, and her eyes widened with every new cure he produced. “I don’t need a whole Walgreens!”

He smiled at her, waved a chocolate bar in front of her face, “Are you sure?”

“Gimme.” She snatched it like a starving animal, and clutched it to her chest, “Mine. Precious.”

He laughed, and swooped in to give her a soft, almost chaste, kiss on her lips. He’d already fought off this bug once, after all, so what was the harm?

He pulled away, smiling, and then she ruined the moment by sneezing and groping blindly for a tissue, wiping at her running nose and blushing in embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I’m not exactly at my sexiest right now.”

Of course she’d apologise for that: of course she’d assume that was the only reason he’d be here with her.

He couldn’t even set her straight.

He covered the sudden little flash of regret with a filthy smirk, “You’re all soft and warm and helpless; better than overwrought lingerie any day.”

She blushed, and he wondered if he’d gone too far: how happy could he make her before something bad would happen?

Before he could worry too much, she leaned back up and kissed him again, slower and deeper, until his hands came automatically to cup her cheeks, and he couldn’t feel anything beyond the warm pressure of her soft lips, and her tongue stroking against his.

He broke away to breathe, and she murmured something he didn’t catch.

He cupped one finger under her chin, and brought her face up to look at him, “What, dearie?”

“I just… I wanted to know if you’d come anyway. Even if I wasn’t… you know… asking for it.”

“Oh,” he felt himself falling, down and down, dizzy and spinning and lost. He’d passed a test he really should have failed; it was just so difficult to play the bastard when she was vulnerable and needing him.

But there was no going back now, and any ground he lost here by playing nice he could make up later, he was sure. “I think I gave you the dratted thing, anyway,” he returned, “Only right to come help with the clean-up.”

“That’s why you can kiss me, right?”

“One of the many reasons,” he replied, with more meaning than she could catch behind his words, “Yes.”

She laughed, and then was caught midway by a massive yawn. “Gods, I’m sorry!” she smiled, “I might have been milking it a little earlier, but I really am still on the rocks.”

“I have soup.” He raised the carton as if he were a caveman with a fresh kill for his mate, and she beamed.

“Share it with me?” she bit her lip and looked up through her eyelashes, and even full of a cold and far to close to tender for his liking, it was enough to break him.

If she was to play the girlfriend for a night, then why not indulge her and play the boyfriend? They could roll on after as they always had, and she’d still be beautiful and bouncy and out of his reach, and he’d still smirk and hunt and refuse to cuddle after. One night would do little to change that, if he was careful with his words.

“Of course, dear.” He smiled, not a smirk but a real smile, and toed off his shoes. Next went his jacket and belt, so he could curl in his trousers and shirtsleeves with her under her duvet and they could share their food with ease.

She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he eased them down so that they were curled together under the covers, his arm around her waist, legs tucked behind hers.

It was a bad idea to spoon her in her bed, when she was sick and her father could return at any moment.

And yet he did so anyway, and she sighed and snuggled into him.

He slipped into a dozing kind of sleep slowly, and with her flat stomach spread under his palm, her whole body curved to fit his, it was natural for his dreams to slide their way from the innocent into the slightly-less-than.

He didn’t, however, expect to awaken what could have been hours later, with Belle turned in his arms, smirking her own wicked smile, her hot, feverish little hand wrapped around his cock.

“Now,” she murmured, and seven hells, she was beautiful in the evening light, hair mussed from sleep and smiling, “I do hope it was me you were thinking of, or this’ll get very awkward, very fast.”

————

Belle had woken up to find him curled around her, holding her as if she was a life raft in the ocean, clinging on for dear life. She had lain for what felt like hours in that embrace, revelling in the sensation of his arms around her, his chest at her back and his head on her shoulder.

It had been gradual, but he had been hardening against her thigh for a while, and she hadn’t been averse to wriggling a little bit to spur him on.

She kept smiling, and hoped that Gold wouldn’t tell her he had a secret thing for the Sheriff or something. He’d come all the way to her home, during his shop’s opening hours, to nurse her back to health. He had to love her just a little bit, if he was willing to do that.

“I think it had something to do with the cupcakes,” he told her, slowly, and his eyes slammed shut when she rewarded him with a quick tug of her wrist, running her palm over his entire length, fingers fluttering over the head. “Yess,” he hissed, “Definitely. Only there was icing everywhere, and it took hours…” his eyes had cracked open, and he was smirking at her.

Two could play this game. She slid her hand back down from head to base, and leaned up, so her face was just inches from his, “Did it get on you, too?” she asked, her smirk a mimic of his, “Did I have to lick and suck it all away?”

He bucked his hips helplessly into her hand, eyes squeezed shut, “Are you in my head, pet?” he asked, voice reedy and strained, “Watching my dreams?”

“You’re always in mine,” she shrugged, because she was only ever allowed to be honest when he was too far gone to notice, and she needed him to know, “Every single one. I figured it was only fair.”

To her surprise, his hand caught hers beneath the bedclothes, stilled her wrist and eased her away from him. Perhaps, she thought, with a plummeting heart, she had gone too far. Perhaps this was the moment when he realised that his happy, bouncy playmate had fallen to far and too hard, and decided it was time to call it off.

But he brought her chocolate and chicken soup, and slept beside her fully-clothed.

The acts of a friend, at least: more than just a man in need of a warm body to fuck.

“You dream of me, dearie?” he asked, slowly. He watched her, dark eyes intense, and she squirmed under his scrutiny.

Do the brave thing…

She looked up, lip caught between her teeth, and decided to be honest, “All the time.”

Within moments, her wrists were caught in his hands, and she was pinned to the bed beneath him, his cock pressed hard against her centre. She gasped, wriggled beneath him, and it was ridiculous how hot and bothered he could make her in moments. “And what to we do, in these dreams of yours?”

She met his eyes, tried to match his leer with one of her own. How easy it was for him, she thought to turn tenderness into something harder and darker, so fast. “Everything.”

“Do we do this here?” he asked, slowly, with another little thrust of his hips, “In your childhood bedroom?”

“Sometimes,” she nodded, and he ground against her, building the pressure between her legs so she arched against him, “Other places, too.”

“Where?” he questioned, lips working at the side of her neck, alternating scrapes of sharp teeth with soothing laps of his tongue.

“The kitchen,” she admitted, “The shower. The backseat of your car.”

“Two out of three dreams fulfilled already,” he murmured, punctuated with another grind of his hips, and a nip of his teeth at her collarbone, “How convenient.”

He could take her practically anywhere in town, and she had almost guaranteed imagined it at some point or another. All of her dreams were built around him, his face and hands and voice, the glint in his eyes when he wanted her, and the softness that came after.

“What about you?” she asked, trying to gain some control back as he tormented her, “What are your dreams?”

“One day…” he started, and paused to run his lips feather-light over her cheekbone, and nip at her earlobe, “It will be warm enough to swim.”

“So?” she frowned, puzzled by his change in topic.

“So,” he drawled, “I dream you beside a pool, someplace hot and sunny, in that tiny red bikini you own and nothing else.”

“If you were there,” she giggled, although the sound was lower than normal, the result of her stuffed up - thankfully, not running - nose, “Then I doubt I’d be wearing it for long.”

He hummed in agreement, one hand leaving hers to drag down across her side, over the curve of her breast beneath her thin pyjama top, past her waist to the top of her sweatpants. He dipped his fingers beneath, just slightly, brushing against her skin, just above where she needed him most.

“Hm, probably not.” He agreed, “To be fair, I disapprove of any clothing you decide to wear.”

“Even lingerie?” she teased, and she nearly died at the sheer hunger on his face as he considered.

“It is marginally easier to discard than actual clothes,” he allowed, “But naked Belle is always my favourite.”

She smiled at him, wide and wicked, and broke her other hand free of his. In moments, she had shimmied out of her sweatpants and pulled her top over her head. She had expected to be alone in bed all day: she had forgone underwear.

“Better?” she asked, coyly, and it was so much easier to be bold and sexy when there was a duvet covering her from the ribs down.

He was staring at her chest, as if he had never seen her bare breasts before. They had fucked hundreds of times, and yet so rarely had they achieved full clothing removal. They were usually too hurried, too crunched for time, too fucking desperate, for all of that.

A bed - her bed - and nakedness and cuddling… what would have been first stages for normal lovers were massive steps for them. Belle hoped Gold wouldn’t notice.

He was too busy, it seemed, leaning down to run his tongue over the tops, cupping both in his hands, his long fingers coming to gently caress the sides, sending shivers up and down her spine, and drawing a wanton little whimper from her lips. He pressed them gently together, so he could bury his tongue in the seam he created, and simultaneously flick his thumbnails over both nipples.

She writhed beneath him, clutching him closer with both hands fisted in his shirt, the sensation sending spirals of heat and electricity through her, and she felt his smirk against her skin, “Anxious?”

“Always.” She felt his breath catch in his throat, and it didn’t help the feeling that this was somehow new, different, special.

She reached up and worked her hands down over his shirt front, undoing the buttons as fast as she could and pushing the fabric from his shoulders. Between them, they got his pants off, too, and she was glad that before their nap he had divested himself of so much of his more difficult clothing.

She tried not to fall apart at the oh-so-rare sensation of his naked body flush against hers, warm under the duvet and covering every part of her. So much of their relationship was nearly fully-clothed encounters in awkward places, against walls and sat on counters.

And she loved every minute of it: how desperate he was for her, how illicit it felt to fuck with clothes on. How different it was from the few almost-perfunctory, by-the-book nights she’d spent with George, before she finally cut him loose.

They were hot and wrong and passionate and impossible, and that was something she loved about everything they did.

And yet somehow, this was just as good. Different and new, exciting in a way that was nothing to do with passion and everything to do with the love blossoming in her chest.

Perhaps he would indulge her, here and now. Silly little girl in love with a grown-up, and sometimes she dreamed of soft sheets and tenderness.

He lined them up, encouraged her to bring her legs around his hips. He was pressed right against her centre, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to have him inside her, around her, touching every inch of her skin covered by him. She wanted to drown in him, and she couldn’t keep from craning up and kissing him hard, hands buried in his hair.

Their kiss was slow and languid, tongues meeting and dancing between them, and she could almost feel him smiling. As if he wanted this, wanted her, as much as she needed him. As if this could mean half as much to him as it did her.

He pushed up inside her slowly, and she broke away from his mouth with a gasp, neck arched back. His lips met her throat, sucked and worried at her skin, as he thrust into her to the hilt, and dragged a hand down to cup her breast once more. She sighed, clutched at his shoulders and arched her back, striving to draw him in even closer, as far inside as he could go.

It was just a fantasy, sweet and beautiful and entirely invented, but it felt almost as if he was doing something more than simply fucking her, the way he had a hundred times before. This felt like else, like he was about to make love to her, and the thought sent a startling amount of pleasure racing through her.

She held him close with her thighs, clenched around him as he breathed hard against her skin. She rubbed her heels against the small of his back, and tried to encourage him to move.

He seemed content to bury his head in her shoulder, and simply rock against her, allow her to roll her hips as she wished so that, with every slow thrust into her, he hit just the right spot, that little place he’d found that sent her flying.

He was making the most wonderful little sounds, harsh and soft and strained, his groans of effort and pleasure mingled and muffled against her neck.

Every movement of his fingers, tongue and cock was slow and tender, thoughtful. The pleasure building inside her was like nothing he’d ever inspired before, something slow and hot and deep, like burning velvet.

“Do you dream of this?” he breathed, as he braced himself on one arm beside her head, and dragged the other down between them. He traced slow circles with his fingertips on her belly, inching lower, as he slowed his thrusts down until it felt like decades between each movement.

Her stomach muscles clenched and shivered under his touch, and if he wasn’t buried balls-deep in her and trembling, she’d think he was tickling her.

As it was, the sensation sent her head reeling, her inner muscles clenching hard around him as she moaned and keened.

“Answer me, pet.”

“Yes!” his finger flicked right against her clit, her reward for honesty, and she was so close, so close, and everything was his voice and his fingers tracing patterns against her aching flesh, and his cock shifting and thrusting deep inside her, and him, him, always him…

“Why?” he asked, pulling out farther than since he’d started and ramming back inside right as he fluttered his fingertips over her clit, dragging a howl of pleasure from her throat, “Why me, why here?”

Did he want her to tell him the truth? The small part of her mind still clinging to sanity, not clouded by sensation and heat and pleasure, tried to work out an answer.

She could tell him she loved him, could scream it from the rooftops. But then he’d stop, deep down, she knew he’d stop, and if she didn’t come soon, if he left her now, she would surely lose her mind.

“Because you’re the only one who makes me feel like this, and the only one who’s ever had me here.” She breathed into his ear, and held him close, his hand trapped between them and his hips snapping back and forth, hitting someplace deep inside her, as he groaned and bit at her throat.

He was possessive, of something he had never claimed to own, but was always and irrevocably his all the same. She would be everything to him, if only he would let her.

For one long, slow second, held himself still inside her, and she was petting his sweat-slick back and kissing along his jaw, almost soothingly.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, he ended it by slamming up inside her, their old heat and speed resumed as he pounded her into the bed, fingers working furiously against her pussy, his mouth claiming hers hard and fast.

She came around him with an uncontrollable cry, the pleasure racing through her so fast and hard that she could barely breathe for it. Her whole body convulsed around him as she clung on tight, holding onto his shoulders for dear life as he swallowed her moans and screams. All it took was his mouth slipping from hers, and for her to shout out his name mindlessly, and he was falling with her, his thrusts jerky and erratic as he came inside her.

Finally, he collapsed against her, boneless, and she could hardly breathe, staring at the ceiling in amazement.

She could have sworn, among the profanities and prayers he had bitten out through his climax, that he had said he loved her.

They clung together for a moment, as he softened inside her but didn’t move, and she peppered his face in kisses, stroking his hair like a lover. It was almost as if he’d stay forever: he’d repeat his admission out loud, and hold her close, and they’d slip into sleep as if it didn’t matter who could find them, as if they did it every night and would continue forever.

She had never been happier in all her life.

And then he was scrambling away, pressing a swift kiss to her lips to stop her protests as he pulled on his boxers from where they had been thrown to the floor.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, dearie,” Rum’s grin was all wrong, hurried and too bright, nothing like the genuine smiles they had shared only moments and hours earlier, “It’s just already eight pm, and I’d hate for you to be caught with me by your father.”

“You don’t have to go,” she said, quietly, “He’ll be hours yet.”

“Things to do, pet,” he pressed another kiss to her forehead, his trousers already pulled up, buttoning his shirt, “People to see. Deals to make. Can’t spend all day in bed with obliging young women.”

And all of a sudden, the walls closed back in, and they were what they were. He was no longer her Rum, who had kissed her so sweetly and loved her so well; he was Mr Gold, who defiled young ladies in their beds and smirked at the pains of the weak.

Belle had known that this was a game, yet another fantasy, even a trick. She had known that he could never really care for her.

“Oh, of course, right.” She nodded, suddenly feeling ill once more. She had been able to breathe, the ache in her throat dulled to barely pain at all, when he had been holding her. Now he was too far away, miles and oceans and continents, and she would be his everything if only he would ask. If only he would want her to be.

“I’ll see you Sunday, then?” she asked, and she hadn’t felt sick with this bug before, but her stomach was twisted and she felt she might throw up.

“If you’re still on the mend, then of course,” his smile made her want to smack him: she had felt dirty and too warm and even overwhelmed by him before and enjoyed every moment:  never had she felt so small, and so very, very cheap.

“Great.” She almost snapped, and he frowned.

“Whatever is the matter, Belle?” her name sounded wrong on his lips now, where only moments ago it had been the most wonderful music she had ever heard.

He had never offered her tenderness before, never this warmth or companionship. He had been wicked and tempting, sweet and funny some nights, dark and sultry others. He had been the perfect no-strings lover, but oh, how she had loved those few seconds this one night, when he had let them be tied together.

She had expected him to tire of her: she had never thought she could feel this weary.

“Nothing, nothing at all.” She said, “I just…” she paused, thought, and then, for the second time that evening, decided to lie to him, “I feel tired again, sleepy. I’d like to be alone, now, if you don’t mind?”

She wanted to ask him to stay with her, to kiss him whether he liked it or not, to smack him and insist that he hear her out, acknowledge that she loved him and he felt more for her than lust and good humour. That this was more than indulgence and mutual attraction. That they could be in love, if only he opened his chipped, empty heart for a moment and let her inside.

But he just gave her a tight smile, and didn’t even flinch when she pulled away from him, didn’t let him kiss her again. It was no longer working, did nothing but add to the pains in her chest, and she couldn’t take it.

Tomorrow, she would put her mask of the bouncy, willing, sexy playmate back on with her red lipstick and sundress, and she’d smile at him in the street.

Tomorrow, she promised herself, as she watched him leave without a backwards glance, she’d forget that he had stood like Romeo beneath her window, and thrown pine cones to get her attention. She’d forget the bag of remedies that still rested on the floor, and the fact it had taken him no more than a half hour to buy the lot and race to her door. That he’d brought them to her and sat next to her under the impression that she was too tired and sick to do anything but sleep.

She’d relinquish the memory of him smiling as she fed him chicken noodle soup, and his warm breath on her cheek as he slept beside her, and held her so tightly against him that it was almost hard to breathe.

Tomorrow, she would be Isabelle, and he would be Mr Gold, and the Rum and Belle who had made love in this bed would be dead and buried.

But for tonight, she would curl like a heartsick teenager around the blankets that still smelt of woodsmoke and grass and his expensive cologne, and cry for a future he never should have allowed her to even glimpse at.  



End file.
